Our Island Stories
Penelope J. Corfield proposes a new and inclusive long-span history course – the Peopling of Britain – to stimulate a renewed interest in the subject among the nation’s secondary school students.
The Peopling of Britain is a challenging concept for which the time is ripe. It will take the form of a new long-span course for secondary school children studying history, a subject that should be compulsory to the age of 16. After all, history (along with geography) serves to root people in time and space: an essential element of personal and civic belonging.
A long-span course on the Peopling of Britain from the Ice Age to the present day will offer a crucial perspective upon changes and continuities over many centuries and will complement other course components with shorter timespans. In this way the proposal responds to the criticisms, from both Left and Right, that Britain’s current history curriculum is too episodic. And it focuses upon an approach that sidesteps a pre-determined narrative of either flag waving or indeed flag burning.
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